


after the storm

by pendules



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Funeral, M/M, Temporary Character Death, time is a slinky
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-28
Updated: 2015-08-28
Packaged: 2018-04-17 18:25:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,494
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4676795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pendules/pseuds/pendules
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Grief's not like a storm that comes and sweeps your life away. It's a whirlwind rising up from deep down inside you.</i><br/> <br/><i>Neither of them can outrun the hurricane thrashing within them. They just have to wait it out.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	after the storm

**Author's Note:**

> Based on [that one terrible post that I decided to make even more terrible](http://bloodravenking.tumblr.com/post/127762548394/ronanremembers-ronanremembers).

Adam finds him in his room. He's standing in front the mirror, considering his own reflection like he's never seen it before. Adam knows what that feels like. He's already dressed, dark suit, white shirt, but it's not the clothing that's out-of-place. It's _him_ , in this empty shell of a building, that's even devoid of ghosts now.

"Hey," he says, and then has the strange urge to recoil at the sound of his own voice. Like he's caused a disturbance in the water that's going to trigger the tsunami. But they can't avoid this forever either.

Ronan turns around, his head slightly bent, eyes landing somewhere below and to the left of Adam's face. He doesn't know what Ronan remembers when he looks at him; he's not sure he wants to.

He realises Ronan's tie is still dangling from his hand, so he steps forward and takes it from him before he can tell him to leave. He pulls it around his neck and Ronan just lets him.

They don't look at each other while he ties it, Adam focusing on doing it as fastidiously as Gansey would. It's good, having something to occupy his hands with, his mind. Something methodical. Just going through the motions. Like it's just another day of putting on his uniform and meeting Gansey and Ronan outside Aglionby. He remembers seeing them together for the first time: Gansey, the picture of a perfect Aglionby student and Ronan, another species altogether. Always together, though. Like mismatched socks. Adam didn't get it for a while, and then he did, all at once, and then it was like there never was any doubt that they belonged next to each other. Part of him liked the idea of getting in between that; part of him knew he never really could.

But here they are anyway — Adam remembers Gansey's expression when he told him about the kiss, when he told him, _I think — I think that's something I want. I think it could be simple._ Surprised and a little bit suspicious before he schooled it into something pleased. He remembers Ronan's betrayed look as he blamed him after they found him, for not stopping him, for driving him to it in some sick way, for making him think they didn't need him anymore. He remembers standing over Gansey's lifeless body, knowing it's not his fault, not anyone's fault, so there never was any saving him after all.

Adam's not the only thing that got between them after all. He and death share that particular honour.

Adam tightens the knot and fixes his lapels, smoothing them down with both hands. He wants to keep his hands there, gently slide them down to his chest to feel his heartbeat, he's aching to find comfort in his touch, but he doesn't know if he's allowed.

He starts pulling away again but Ronan catches one of his hands. He presses the back of it to his cheek.

His skin's damp under his fingers. Adam didn't even realise he'd been silently crying. Ronan doesn't do anything silently.

Adam looks at him properly for the first time and his eyes are pale and haunted, red-rimmed like he's been awake for days.

It's like a dam bursts in his chest. The only thing he can think of to stop the flow is to crush Ronan to his body.

Ronan just falls right into him. Fists his hands into the back of his jacket, buries his face into his shoulder, holds on for dear life. He's shaking slightly. Maybe they both are. Adam cradles Ronan's head against him, thumb brushing small circles over the back of his neck.

Adam absently wonders if his heart is bleeding onto Ronan's perfectly-knotted tie and what would Gansey think.

It's funny, how there could be this much pain and no physical evidence to show for it. It's unfair almost. The wreckage left inside of both of them that no one could diagnose.

Grief's not like a storm that comes and sweeps your life away. It's a whirlwind rising up from deep down inside you.

Neither of them can outrun the hurricane thrashing within them. They just have to wait it out.

Ronan cries into his cheap suit and Adam thinks over and over, _We'll be okay, it'll be over soon._

*

The funeral lasts a lifetime. Blue sits next to him and holds Noah's warm, alive hand through the whole thing. One of Adam's hands is holding his journal. The other is for if Ronan needs it. Ronan's clutching a rosary with both hands. He's stopped shaking. His head's bowed and he looks tiny, childlike, folded in the pew, like he wants to disappear.

There are speeches and more speeches and these people didn't know anything about the real Gansey and Ronan's not angry anymore so Adam's angry for both of them. Helen tells the most Gansey of Gansey stories and Blue's snorting through tears and Ronan's so quiet and still and Adam would take more blame and guilt over seeing him like this any day.

When it's over, Adam stands, defiant, and leans down to kiss Blue's cheek, turns back to Ronan who comes alive as he squeezes his hand. He walks down the aisle, straight-backed and resolved, not paying any mind to who's watching, what they're thinking of him.

It's just three sentences. The only things he needs to say that he realised as he looked at Ronan when they pulled apart a century later, the only two things left on earth, doomed to wander the wilderness. _You were the best friend anyone has ever known. Simply saying thank you will never be enough. Just this, then, as always: Excelsior._

He tucks the journal into his coffin, pausing to imagine him opening his eyes, maybe tomorrow, maybe six hundred years from now.

Blue joins him and sprinkles some mint leaves over the journal. Noah's standing behind her, and Adam's wondering again if maybe when he's lived out his life and died, if Gansey will wake up again. Maybe _they're_ not the ones left to wander the wilderness. Adam can't bear it. And then Ronan's hand slips into his and he's back to the present and they're standing in front of his coffin and they watch as he gets taken away.

*

Blue spends a long time sitting by his grave after everyone's gone. It starts raining and Adam's still there, just waiting. He drives her home. Noah took Ronan back to Monmouth under threat of actually sedating him before he dies of sleep-deprivation. Adam hopes he can forget for a few hours at least, hopes his dreams won't turn on him this time. He wishes for a sedative himself, dreamless sleep, or some kind of fantasy where he can pretend they're all still whole.

He takes her home and they're sitting under the tree in her backyard, both shivering but not ready to face a houseful of people.

"It was supposed to be me," Blue says, eventually. "I was supposed to kill him."

"I thought the same thing."

Blue looks at him like she's not really seeing him.

"Why did he do it?" she asks quietly.

"For Noah," he says. "For us."

"How is this _fair_?" she says, with a slightly hysterical sob that twists his insides.

"It's not. It's not. There's no logic or reason to the universe. It just devours what it wants and spits out the rest of us to live with the loss."

"That's not — There's always a balance in nature. It takes and it gives something in return."

"Well, it did. A life for a life."

" _Exactly_ ," she says, her eyes lighting up with some kind of epiphany.

"What? Blue — _what_?" he says, urgently.

"He'll wake up. After Noah's dead, he'll —"

"Yeah," Adam interrupts. "But what then? He'll be all alone." It'll be his worst fear, come to life. Worse than death. Waking up and realising that all of them are dead.

"What if he didn't have to be?" Blue says, the words chilling him to the bone.

*

Blue had run inside and dragged Gwenllian out to the porch where Adam was waiting.

"Explain that again," Adam says after struggling to follow their weird, witchy back-and-forth.

"It's a spell," Blue says. "A sleeping spell. We all go to sleep in the earth and we wake up when he does — when Noah's lived a long life and dies of entirely natural causes."

"How can we be sure we'll wake up?"

"Because _Gansey_ will wake us."

"What about Noah?"

Blue looks heartbroken. "He wasn't supposed to _die_ , Adam. He wasn't supposed to meet us. He was supposed to live his life."

"Will he — will he forget about us?"

"I don't know. Maybe everyone will."

"But we'll remember?"

"Yes," Blue says, smiling, her eyes shiny with tears.

"And Gansey —"

"He'll remember everything." 

"Ronan —" Ronan's going to see Gansey again. Ronan and Gansey, mismatched socks, back together where they belong.

"Let him sleep. We'll tell them in the morning."

*

Adam's looking at the rising sun from his bedroom window when Ronan wakes up.

"Adam?" he asks, confused. Adam wonders if he hasn't remembered yet. Or if there isn't any forgetting anymore, not even for those five blissful seconds.

Adam sits on the edge of his bed as he pulls himself upright.

There's no averted eyes now. There's no time. Adam wishes he could just stop it and live in this one moment forever. He realises that Monmouth's going to become a shrine, full of memories, never-changing.

Ronan looks half-worried and half-curious.

"Tell me," he says, because he knows what that look means.

"Blue and I figured something out."

"What do we do?" Ronan says without pausing to absorb that.

"We can't let him wake up alone," Adam says, suddenly desperate. "Not like he died." There's a throbbing behind his eyes from all the unshed tears. The flood inside of him with no spillways.

"Do we have to die too?" he asks, like it's a perfunctory question.

"No, just, sleep. For a long while."

Ronan laughs under his breath.

"I think I might prefer the other thing."

"You won't dream. It'll be like you're — frozen in time."

"Hang on, what do you mean 'you'?" Ronan says, eyes narrowing.

Adam gives him another look that he quickly deciphers.

"You're not going," Ronan says softly.

Adam shakes his head.

"I can't — I have to tend to Cabeswater. And I'm not — I'm not _done_ here. And someone has to stay with Noah."

"No, Adam, _don't_." He grasps the side of his face tenderly, fear in his eyes.

Adam smiles at him like the world's ending around them.

"Tell him — tell him I wouldn't trade one second of it."

"I wouldn't either," Ronan says, voice low, brushing his thumb over Adam's cheek.

"I'll look after Matthew. I promise."

Ronan kisses his forehead. Then, he kisses his mouth. Slow and gentle, like a promise. Like it's not their last. 

It feels like a bullet ripping through his heart. There should be blood spatter all over both of them now.

*

He and Gwenllian perform the spell. It goes off without a hitch. He's on his knees when he rests his fingertips against Ronan's still-warm cheek and he realises he's never going to see him with his eyes open again. He's never going to hear Blue's laugh.

He breaks down for the first time, then, with Noah's arms around him.

*

He talks to them, to their sleeping bodies, he tells them about Cabeswater and how the world's changing. Tells Blue about her family and tells Gansey about his sister and tells Ronan about how much Matthew's grown. He visits once a month for as long as he can. He dies a year before Noah does, only somehow he's back on the porch of 300 Fox Way and he's eighteen years old, wearing a cheap, rain-soaked suit, saying, "Explain that again."

*

Sleeping without dreams is a relief and a deep pit of emptiness. 

Waking is — Waking is seeing the sky for the first time, falling into the warm embrace of an ocean, golden sunlight kissing his face after a lifetime in the dark.

Hazel eyes are looking down at him. For a moment, they are his world. There's a single light source somewhere in his periphery.

"Adam?" a voice says, a voice he knew once, a voice he would never hear again.

He sits up, slowly, gingerly. He stares, breathing hard, at their surroundings. Gray, dusty, underground.

He turns back to his waker. He looks exactly like he did when he was buried. 

He's holding a journal, the pages yellowed with age.

"It still smells like mint," he says, bemused.

Adam pulls him into his arms. He's warm and breathing and alive. They both are.

*

Adam stays with Ronan as Gansey moves on to wake Blue.

Adam grabs his hands as he jerks awake with a gasp as if he's been shocked back to life.

"Hey, hey, it's okay."

" _Adam?_ " he asks, disbelievingly.

It's dark in the cavern, but by the glow of the distant lantern, he can make out the outline of his face.

"It's me," he tells him.

"How can you be _here_?" He remembers. Remembers Adam staying behind. Remembers the other timeline. They're both reality, happening simultaneously, diverging from that decision.

"We use time more than once, remember? Cabeswater brought me back to that time, and I changed my decision."

Ronan kisses him for the third time sixty years since the last one.

*

Ronan pulls him out into the light. Cabeswater never changes. It could be today or sixty years ago or ten thousand years in the future. It's a part of them now just like they became a part of it. While they slept, the forest was growing above them and inside them. Both drawing energy from the other.

Blue and Gansey appear a few minutes later. Ronan lets him go for a second to hug Gansey, nearly lifting him off his feet. Blue's laughing uncontrollably. Ronan kisses the top of her head before coming back to Adam.

He rests his forehead against Adam's for a long moment, eyes closed, and then he pulls away and they just watch each other for what feels like forever.

Adam looks into his brilliant blue eyes that he once thought he'd never see again and it's all over now. There's nothing but lightness and warmth filling up his body. The wreckage has been cleared away and the holes stitched up. From sixty years of a life well-lived and sixty years of sleep. There's a whole new lifetime in front of him now, in these people he loves the most, in Ronan's eyes and Gansey's voice and Blue's laugh. They'll go to Noah's funeral and meet his grandkids and spread his ashes in Cabeswater and eventually fall asleep and wake up and start living each day as it comes. As kids and as kings and queens and as legends. Wandering the new world together.


End file.
